Note: The point of this article, or of part 1, is not to argue in favor of everyone making a dozen kids. I only wish to underline how the real issues at the heart of both poverty and climate change remain unaddressed because we are more than willing to point our fingers at “population”. Pointing at overpopulation is an escapist attitude that allows one to virtue signal about being environmentally conscious without recognizing the problem properly. It is a kind of victim-blaming to say that making children– the most fundamental human urge– is responsible for all the troubles in our world. We do not destroy cities because pandemics are likely to originate and spread through cities. We develop medical technologies because the benefits of urbanization far outweigh the costs. All decisions are transactional; which is why it is necessary to stop blaming “overpopulation” and start accepting what really ails us.
Imagine that you have a daughter. You bought her T-shirt when she was nine. Now she is thirteen and the T-shirt no longer fits her. Would you buy her new clothes or ask her to stop growing so that she can fit into her old clothes?
Your daughter outgrowing her clothes is an argument in favor of new clothes, not one in favor of stopping her development. You don’t say that your daughter has “overgrown”. (Even if she has grown overweight, asking her to wear clothes that don’t fit won’t make her healthy).
However, this stop-growing-because-your-clothes-wont-fit logic is thrown around by governments, activists, and the overeducated with regards to “overpopulation.” China imposed its infamous one-child policy because Mao believed that his communist paradise could not provide basic amenities to so many people. In India, during the Emergency, “crown prince” Sanjay Gandhi, driven by the same logic ensured that at least 8.1 million men were sterilized (Without consent). These policies from the State treating its citizens as subjects, making them “accountable” to the State when it is the State’s responsibility to be accountable to its citizens, and provide them the necessary services that it is supposed to provide.
Population growth is an argument in favor of increasing the efficiency of using resources and producing output from them. And how do we do that? We can’t buy a bigger Earth, surely?
Well, we don’t need to buy a bigger Earth. The reason why the Malthusian model is so spectacularly wrong is that it assumes humans to be a bunch of mindless rabbits that reproduce until they are wiped out. While considering natural resources and the rate of food production, Malthus forgets to introduce human intelligence into the equation. Unlike rabbits, humans have the ability to innovate. Human intelligence is the most valuable resource. We need not depend solely on the excruciatingly slow, trial and error, wait-for-a-million years mechanism of adaptation through evolution. We can think.
In 1968, the environmentalist Paul Ehrlich predicted in his book The Population Bomb that the 21st century would be characterized by mass starvation and death. Instead, the efficiency of food production is at an all-time high. Scientific advancements, from hybrid crop varieties to genetic engineering mean that production of food is no longer the perennial headache it used to be. The only reason starvation continues is because States like India have extremely inefficient public distribution systems and misplaced economic incentives.
Similarly, innovation makes products cheaper and more efficient. Before 1991, in India, one had to wait for months in order to buy a telephone. Today, more people in India have cellphones than toilets. The first lightbulb had a paper filament that burned out in minutes. Within the next few decades, tungsten filaments were invented, and the whole world was revolutionized as bulbs lasted for months. Today, we have LEDs. Every single thing that we consume and take for granted is the result of endless human innovation. And this innovation will never stop.
Climate change, too, is most effectively dealt with through innovation and not by asking people to stop procreating. A move towards electric cars, for instance, would be achieved through increased access and cheaper costs of production. The same goes for renewable sources of energy. The climate crisis is not the first time humanity has had to tackle an existential threat. And it won’t be the last, because, like all the threats before it, climate change too would be combated through human innovation and intelligence.
Many things stifle innovation and novel solutions. Among them is activism. Consider nuclear energy, for instance. Activism has made nuclear technology look extremely dangerous when it has been much safer than fossil-fuels and less damaging to the environment than hydroelectricity. Our mistrust of all things nuclear is driven by the availability heuristic, where the very few but extremely sensational nuclear disasters stand out while the great efficiency of nuclear production, is forgotten. The 20th century fear of a nuclear apocalypse continues to drive environmentalism today, in 2020, when the world has changed almost entirely.
Car accidents are a lot more common than plane crashes, yet many more are afraid of air travel. Indeed, air travel is the safest and the most efficient means of long-distance travel ever devised, but much like Nuclear energy, its disasters stand out because the technology seems so unnatural. All nuclear disasters have been the result of bureaucratic mismanagement and corporate negligence. The argument should be in favor of tightening safety standards, not banning Nuclear. (Did we ban cars, or did we introduce seat belts and make safety testing more rigorous?)
Bad policies are central to environmental disasters. Consider Delhi, for instance. Air pollution in Delhi is driven primarily by vehicular emissions. Why are there so many cars in the city? Because Delhi’s bus service is largely ineffective and low capacity and the Metro cannot provide last-mile connectivity. To get anywhere, one either has to buy a car or use private SUVs and Omnis as a replacement for public transport. Now the capacity of a bus is several times that of an SUV and therefore, it is a more efficient and cleaner means of mass transportation. Population growth in Delhi should result in more buses. People cannot be expected to reproduce according to the state of public transport in a city, especially when it is the Capital– the heart of power, and promising opportunities. Another cause for air pollution in Delhi is the burning of crop stubble by farmers in Punjab. This is also a policy failure that cannot be blamed on overpopulation.
The bottom line, thus, is that for innovation to occur, the economy must be healthy and education effective. Large countries like India, instead of blaming mass mismanagement and general anarchy on the large population, should focus on allowing the economy to grow faster by cutting back unnecessary regulation (like extremely high spectrum fees in the telecom industry) and repealing harmful laws (like the recent Haryana law mandating 75 percent reservation of private-sector jobs for residents of Haryana) and abstaining from making sweeping, disastrous policies overnight (Like demonetization).
Large families become smaller as their standard of living improves. This is a trend that is true across the world. A highly accurate rule of thumb is that the poorer the nation, the higher its population growth rate. The best way to have a stable population, then, is to repeal laws that hinder economic growth and cripple free markets. The best way to combat climate change is to ensure a better economy and incentivize innovation through access to quality education. Making fewer children does not solve anything unless economic policies are made more effective.
Post Script:
For more detailed information on Nuclear energy and its efficiency, refer to the following:
https://environmentalprogress.org/the-complete-case-for-nuclear
https://quillette.com/2020/06/25/why-climate-activists-will-go-nuclear-or-go-extinct/
50 Shades of Meh. 
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